Saturday, July 5, 2008

Side chaining

Side chaining TutorialLevel: BeginnerGeneral Overview: Learn how to stylize your synthes by adding some side chaining to get interesting affects. (Sorry no pictures only video this time)Time: Around 10 minutes or less.

Ok well I'll admit I didn't learn side chaining till later on in my life. Once I learned though I instantly added it to my style. Side chaining can get you a nice pumping sound from your synthe and give you a good club feel. It can be used in tons of situations and multiple genres. You can place it on a pad or even a bass to get that sound your looking for. Play around with it and you'll soon see what you can do with it.

In FL Studios it's not so apparent on how you can get that effect. Sure you could automate it but thats just a pain all around. The easiest way to do it and the way I do it is through the Fruity Peak Controller which can be found in the FX for your Mixer channel.

So how do you set it up? Well really you can use anything, I commonly find myself using a Fruity Kick because I've never really used it for anything else. Anyways add a fruity kick or whatever you would like to affect your synthe to a new channel. Give it a mixer slot and name it SIDECHAIN. Now that you have it linked to a mixer channel in the 8th slot (it really doesn't matter which slot) put a "Fruity Peak Controller". It is auto set to MUTE so if you want the synthe or sample to still make sound unmute it (bottom right corner of the controller). Mess with the controls after it is linked to something for now leave it as default.

Linking it to something is pretty simple. I like to link it to the volume knob (which is pretty common amongst Trance music and the likes). So right click the volume knob and click on "Link to Controller...." A new window should now pop up with some settings. In this window set the "Internal controller" to "Peak Ctrl (SIDECHAIN). Then for the mapping formula I like to set it to "Inverted" pick one that suits you best or make your own. (Math is needed to make your own)

Once your all linked make a pattern in the Fruity Kick channel maybe a 4 to the floor kick pattern or whatever you prefer. Make sure whatever your Synthe is linked to is playing, it should be apparent what it does when you hit the play button. It's fairly easy from here and just play around with the settings and find what you like best.

If you find anything wrong or something that needs a change leave a message and I'll try and change it.